Thunderhawk
by SillyGoy
Summary: A Thunderhawk and its pilot are warped into the Strike Witches Universe for the sake of this story. Rate T for safety. Rate and review, no matter how harsh.


A/N: Hello friends. As an apology for not updating Louise Summons Paarthurnax, I give you this story.

09/13/2013: Updated this chapter.

* * *

My Thunderhawk and I are assailed by a wave of turbulence as we pierce through the corrupted, blood-red sky of the besieged hive world below us at the breakneck speed of mach two. Having dropped off squads Octavius and Tantius at their assigned landing zone and given them limited air-artillery cover, ridding of my brothers the trouble of having to take down a heretic walker and tank in a single pass, I go to the swirling inferno of battle once more, outfitted for close air support, with three hellstrike missiles under each of my war machine's massive adamantium wings.

The brutish, hundred and twenty-one-tonne flying box of metal that is my Thunderhawk loses its altitude at a rapid rate as it descends, the towering, burning spires of this planet slowly filling up my armourcrys windshields as they become closer to me. My autosenses pick up activity in the streets below as I neatly weave into a rather narrow space in between two sub-spires: squads Lorenzo and Oddimar, five terminators, veterans of hundreds of crusades, and ten battle-brothers engaging a few scores of heretic cultists backed by a few traitor astartes. I see esteemed brother Chalcedon cut down dozens with his holy assault cannon before sheer distance erases my lock upon them.

At the traitors' back ranks, I see heavy armour: a walker that reminds me of the crabs sometimes served in the Feasting Hall - a Defiler. The thought of it resembling the food I eat from time to time elicits the tiniest smirk from me as I flick the number one firing switch and let loose a Hellstrike missile while squeezing the primary firing stub, my twin-linked heavy bolters spitting out rocket-propelled grenades at a rapid rate, flaying away the power armor of the fools surrounding the Defiler below me - fools whom I am embarrassed to say were once just like me, a space marine in service to the Emperor.

How they lost their way is beyond me; it is unthinkable. So I will not think about such things, for it is dangerous.

The sight of the Chaos walker's legs faltering and buckling down in the inferno I just served it is enough to convince me of its death, and so I continue on my way to see my mission complete: to seek and destroy as many armored targets as I can and provide support for our soldiers on the ground.

A few hours ago, brother Julius and I were assigned specific, designated objectives, but with the enemy becoming more and more broken, our Captain has given us two veterans some freedom in how we fight.

Anti-aircraft flak tracers race into the air, shells packed together tightly in columns, in an attempt to bring down loyalist aeronautica - I see a battery north-east from where I am, exposed to me, and I immediately put my war machine in a shallow dive, the five different crosshairs of my various weapons following where I am looking at, and thumb the secondary firing stub.

From the glaring muzzle of the turbo-laser mounted on top of my Thunderhawk comes out a thick, blue beam of pure, destructive energy. It travels at the speed of light at my targets, and maintains itself for a good half-second to see the foe blow up in a fiery, satisfying explosion. Having slowed down since my descent, I enter a shallow climb at around seven hundred kilometers per hour, heading to where the battle is thickest.

Buildings hundreds of stories high flank me left and right, and it is not long before I escape their oppressive shadows. Pressurized air whistles around my heavy aircraft outside as it maneuvers, but I cannot hear it.

Operating such a magnificent death machine feels great.

You should fly a Thunderhawk sometime.

My vox crackles into life. It is Captain Perditor.

**"Pykor, a heretic warhound titan besets squad Octavius. Redirect and engage it."**

I respond, my voice synthesized and metallic, as my original vocal cords of flesh were eviscerated by a chainsword and replaced by a vox caster.

**"Yes, Captain."**

I follow my commander's orders and arrive to where squad Octavius is in just forty or so seconds. Truth be told, I dislike the sergeant; and it is indeed sweet to see him in pain, so that he could learn to become a better person and get rid of his imperious, arrogant attitude.

The small God-Machine hunts both him and his squad through Spire Regulus - both him, and his squad, whose members are scattered, fleeing for their lives, sprinting through streets and making turns everywhere. I could say that our foe's footmen are chasing them, but they are just leisurely walking alongside the titan, such is their indiscipline.

It makes me sick; it is like they are not taking us seriously.

I had gained altitude before I'd come here, so I go for a mad, steep dive at the titan, my HUD locking it in red, pixelated brackets. I release three hellstrike missiles at the same time and unleash my heavy bolters in an effort to overwhelm the fourteen-meter-tall walker's void shields, which flash brightly in reaction to my simultaneous attacks, before glowing dimly afterwards: now is my chance to strike.

I squeeze the secondary firing stub decisively, my craft three kilometers away from the ground at a speed nearing that of sound's, and the turbolaser tears through the recharging void shields to punch straight through the right armourcrys 'eye' of its turtle-like head, killing the crew within. Having been hit at an awkward stance, the sudden lack of control input from its deceased operators force it to fall, all four hundred tonnes of it, right into the ground, making a rather impressive shockwave and dust cloud.

Mildly surprising, though, how it managed not to touch the flanking buildings as it fell.

I pull the control stick back to prevent myself from slamming into the ground.

**"Squad Octavius,"** I vox the survivors, **"The titan has fallen."**

**"Thank you, brother Pykor,"** replies their sergeant, but to neither him nor his squad do I give further reply.

I level out the craft as I prepare to do one more attack run on the heretics that troubled squad Octavius so much, not so I could show off to the sergeant, but because it is my duty as a soldier of the Emperor to slay such foes.

However, my Thunderhawk begins to shake violently, and without the characteristic thump of getting hit by reflexes push me to perform evasive maneuvers uselessly, for there is, in fact, no outside force to harm me: something that I discover after a few moments of observation. I make a decision.

**"Bastion Hades, this is Thunderhawk 'Death of Golgoth'. I am coming in to land; ETA three minutes. I fear my war machine may be malfunctioning."**

I wait for a few moments, but there is no reply, and the shaking only gets more violent.

**"Bastion Hades, this is Thunderhawk 'Death of Golgoth'"**, I repeat, **"I am coming in to la-"**

I am interrupted mid-sentence, as my body lurches forwards at the same time my Thunderhawk breaches the very boundaries of reality. Like breaking into the surface of the ocean, I am met with a different world, but only for a split second; I cannot comprehend what I see, hear, smell, taste or feel in that strange world, and so I cannot describe it.

I black out for the briefest of moments, and when I come to, the scenery has changed: the sky is no longer a sickly blood-red but a bright blue, with white clouds instead of black ones. The constant vox chatter has stopped, replaced by eerie, alien silence due to the circumstances. The land before me, once nothing but twisting, sky-piercing towers of steel and various other buildings, is now water.

**"I am over an ocean?"** I muse, before becoming enraged. **"What trickery is this?!"**

I glance around my helm's visor for a moment and find the all my instruments are still working. The altimeter reads at a steady 5,023m, the speedometer reads at 957km/h, ammo counters are working, et cetera.

Confused and worried, I spend the next ten minutes trying to vox anybody in my warhost, changing frequencies every so often. For the next twenty minutes after that, I try to vox civilians. Nothing. Nothing, until I hear the faintest of voices.

Hope renewed, I track down the source of the transmission and dive down to get a clearer signal. At 3,000m, my autosenses lock onto the faint dots dancing over the water, and the quality of the transmission becomes so that it is actually intelligible.

_"...-own contact approaching us at 3 o'clock, up high, really really fast!"_

_"Is it a Neuroi, Perrine-san?"_

But then a sudden red lasbeam, perhaps a turbolaser, strikes my craft in the right wing, forcing it to roll sideways! The explosion that denotes the impact makes the Thunderhawk shudder, and the very marrows of my bones feel it. The poor, pained machine spirits of my vehicle communicate to me that while there is no significant damage, the right wing cannot take a beating that severe again, or there will be grave consequences, like, say, death.

Damn it! How careless of me! I recognized the movements of an aerial dogfight and yet I made no precautions! Ah, but it is indeed a grave sin to fire upon an astartes, so human or not, here I come!

The small, black spheroids that the flying women appear to be fighting are the cause for my and the Thunderhawk's misery, and they do not relent their fire upon us: they keep unleashing their red turbolasers at me, wherever their muzzles may be hidden in those sleek, inhuman hulls - ah, so they are xenos craft; their design betrays their origin!

I dodge all the fire with quick, ungraceful, almost disgusting maneuvers and engage the foe from a kilometer away, supercomputer-guided heavy bolters furiously barking and turbolaser roaring, but only once, in deadly admonishment for their having inflicted great pain to this great craft's machine spirit.

The accurate, lightning-quick volleys of rocket-propelled, diamatine-tipped explosive rounds destroy them, all of them; all fourteen of them shredded in just two seconds - quite literally so, as there seems to be nothing but sparkling powder down there, their remains, I presume. I break the sound barrier as I complete my pass and perform a zoom-climb, as I push the thrusters to their fullest.

_"... sugoi..."_

_"Mon Dieu... no, that's definitely not a Neuroi."_

I wonder if the little flying women with leg augments are referring to the black machines with that term.

High above, I look at the surroundings around me: directly below me is a stretch of glistening blue water, creased by waves, separating two large landmasses thirty kilometers apart, I estimate. The sheer greenery that the land displays is alien to me, for it is calm, and very much unlike the sole jungle death world I had been to, where both the flora and fauna were actively trying to kill me.

Cloud layers visibly separate the territories in the sky; one layer has its clouds puffy, akin to the spun juvie snacks that stands would often peddle during cultural festivals in the hive world of Monmusu; while another, up above, has only pathetic, thin feathery tuffs to show.

My instruments tell me that there is a gentle breeze coming in from the left.

_"... an energy beam? Everyone on guard and prepare to evade! He looks like he's going for a pass against us!"_

Overall, it's very scenic, very peaceful.

I don't like it.

It is alien to me, for obvious reasons.

Where are my brothers? Where have I been taken to?

What is this place? Is this all an illusion?

So many questions, not enough time; answers I'll never have!

Eugh, how annoying.

I soften the throttle and move to circle around them, unwilling to match their very slow speeds lest I stall and fall.

**"Greetings, warrior women,"** I vox them, **"Direct me to the nearest starport immediately. This is an order coming from an astartes."**

The first reply is so unexpected; it comes from the twin-tailed, sun-kissed child with the tan-colored leg augments.

_"Hehehe~! He called us 'warrior women'! Alright, we're renaming the five-oh-first to 'The Warrior Women!'"_

**"What? No."**

_"Identify yourself. Now."_, says a deeper, more mature voice. Unsurprisingly, I am angry, and taken aback by

**"The audacity! How dare you-!"**

_"We are authorized to use lethal force if you keep this up. Name, rank and unit. Now."_

_"... a-ano... I think you're being t-too hard-"_

_"Quiet, Miyafuji."_

_"H-hai..."_

But then it occurs to me that most Imperials don't even know what a space marine truly looks like, much less a Thunderhawk, since they only hear of us through Ecclesiarchal services, which greatly embellish and dilute our true image, or so I think, and so I forgive them, for now, and play along, so as not to waste time. When they learn that I am a space marine, surely they will listen to me.

**"Sergeant Alfonso 'Hammerhand' Pykor, Crimson Tigers' Fourth Company."**

_"What?"_

**"Yes, indeed, I am an astartes. Worry not, I fo-"**

_"What the hell are you going on about?"_

I find it annoying that some people don't even recognize my chapter, and don't know the meaning of that simple High Gothic word.

**"I am a space marine, you _twit_. Now, you will direct-"**

A chorus of replies assails me.

_"A what?"_

_"A space marine?"_

_"Shirley, I think this guy's cuckoo."_

_"What's a space marine?"_

_"A marine from space?"_

_"I don't really like his imperious attitude, Lynne-chan."_

...

**"Beh."**

_"Quit playing games with us. Your brash actions today have resulted in a Witch going into a nearly-fatal stall and-"  
_

I do not have time for this.

How embarrassing.

Hn.

I push the throttle to 100% and zoom up and away from them. If they will not help me, then I'll just find the bloody starport myself. My glorious war machine pushes into the very upper regions of the planet's atmosphere as it is wreathed in flame brought about by intense friction, and I am soon met with the soft curve of the blue ball before me and its cloudy weather systems, the sun unashamedly naked and smiling at it.

I am now in orbit.

I lift my chin upwards and see the vast expanse of space before me, stars both dim and bright, far and farther shining their lights at me behind a dark, blurry background composed of empty space, and the dark hue of the gas clouds of one of the galaxy's many arms.

Several times faster than a speeding bullet, I cruise around this rather picturesque cerulean ball of rock, water and plant-life, craning my head around on the lookout for any signs of orbital shipping.

I observe for five minutes.

Frakking nothing.

My craft's promethium-driven speed is such that I am actually curving around the planet, and I behold a grey moon that orbits the blue planet below me. I bank left, and look at the land beneath out of idle curiosity -

... what in Guilliman's name is that?!

There, in one of the smaller continents, I see a massive, swirling cloud system that reaches up from the lower atmosphere to my altitude. I feel a sense of dread assailing me as my autosenses pick up small black objects pouring out from its belly. It is shaped like a cone, and I see the the telltale flashes of frequent lightning strikes illuminating some of its parts.

That must be the mothership of the xenos craft I had engaged earlier! It must be responsible for the obvious blockade of this planet! Judging from the devastation of the land beneath me, this siege has been going on for quite some time - where is the liberation fleet?!

Choler and disgust overwhelm me as I continue to look upon its blighted, ugly form, and I am then driven to dip my craft's nose yet again to engage it. How dare these revolting aliens! My vehicle is wreathed in fire again as it descends at a rapid rate; gravity's oppressive grasp is no longer palpable but my safety harness secures me to my seat.

Twenty thousand; fifteen thousand; ten thousand - the altimeter flashes such meaningful numbers in my HUD, and now I see up close the effects of this siege:

The city which I am flying over, is utterly ruined, deserted, broken, raped. It was once a great, populous center, I am sure, but the harmful shadow of the xenos mothership has changed all of that. Hell, even the land beyond appears like nothing but charred wasteland and dead trees. Rubble litters the road and all buildings are damaged to varying degrees. I see nary a soul down there - perhaps the people are in hiding? Who knows.

I'll find out once I am done with my slaughter.

My choler boils. I will rescue them, I decide, for I am their guardian angel - their angel of death.

My machine spirits, eager to mete out righteous punishment, automatically lock onto twelve targets; the first six, towards my north-west - as I am in fact flying towards the planet's North - are allies: more of the flying leg-augmented warrior women armed with stubbers; the ones towards my right are six black xenos craft of around the same size as my Thunderhawk, very much unlike the small ones I'd engaged earlier.

_"... un...n c...tact... high..."_

They are shaped like flying wings, with skins made out of a crystal-like material divided into hexagonal plates to cover their whole bodies. Some hexagonal tiles are red, and their dim glow makes me suspect that they are more than just simple markings.

They fly in formation, their bulk and calm demeanor reminding me of a squadron of Imperial Marauder bombers leisurely flying into the carnage of battle.

_"... ert, wi...es!"_

I switch off the vox.

They are five kilometers away, and I changed my craft's flight so that I am diving from high up above towards them; I had already broken the sound barrier long ago, just shortly after I entered my dive.

Just a few moments pass and they are in what I would consider point-blank range in a speeding Thunderhawk. I make a decision; their fates are in my hands.

I flick several firing switches and release my remaining three Hellstrike missiles at the nearest xenos craft, whose crystalline material show properties of being ablative in the split-second between the missiles' penetration and detonation.

The other three, I target with my four twin-linked heavy bolters whose mighty roars I cannot hear through inches of thick adamantium, thermoplas and ceramite. From their red hexagon weapon-tiles, the foe sends more of their crimson lasbeams at me, which I evade with a hard turn towards the right, and my engines make the craft shudder as they screech.

I see the strange, flowing crystal that composes them cave in under my awesome firepower, and the flying wing nearest to me explodes, joining its three freshly-killed companions in death, in a shower of - I am not sure how to describe it - glittering wafers in the air, not dissimilar to the radio-jammer swarms the Guard sometimes utilize.

However, the remaining two survivors pathetically cling onto life, and I snarl at them behind my armored faceplate. One of them is so shredded, so aerodynamically unfit to fly, for my heavy bolters ripped off almost the entirety of its left wing which has been reduced into glittering wafers. And yet, it stays aloft, and I see, at its center, a glowing, shifting, crimson gem. The other one isn't in such a bad state, but its own gem is naked to the air as well.

Their cores, definitely.

I wonder what happens when you shoot them.

And then my face contorts in disgust as I see before me the foulest arcane tech-magicks only misguided xenos such as these can conjure: the crystalline materia shifts, grows, bends, around the cores - no, not just around the cores of the foul craft, but every damaged part! The two flying wings are _regenerating_! Disgusting! I roll towards the right, going inverted before stopping when I am in a deep left bank, a fusillade of crimson lasbeams missing me entirely when I pull the stick back and point the very fore of my ship at them.

Ah, how fortunate - they are lined up together in a column! Let us see if a single shot can take them out...

I look at them through the armourcrys of my lens and the armourcrys of the windshields, and the crosshair on the screen follows my eye; a split-second later, my HUD urges me to fire with a flashing, red phrase - and so, I do.

I squeeze the secondary firing stub on my control stick, and let loose yet another thick beam of energy - and, success! I skewer both of them, like a lancer impaling two foes simultaneously in a lone, mad cavalry charge. The further one explodes in its kind's usual sparkling death-shower, but the nearer one stays aloft, a neat hole punched through its still-regenerating body. I missed the core?!

Damn myself!

I pay for my poor performance: the underside of my war machine is struck by one, no, two lasbeams, and I feel the craft lurch and shake in a very, very violent manner as I shoot over the surviving flying wing. I try to comfort the machine spirits, but they remain panicked! I try to escape by pushing the thrusters to their limit and zooming up towards the sky once more in a desperate zoom-climb.

Wait, no!

Upon my HUD, terrifying words have come to mock me:

_Engine #2 Stopped Working / Rocket Fuel Cutoff / Fuel Line Severed_

_Engine #3 Stopped Working / Turbofan Malfunction / Rocket Fuel Cutoff / Fuel Line Severed / Obstructing Foreign Object_

_Right Wing Severe Structural Damage / Land Immediately_

Shit.

Shame and dishonor upon me.

I will try to land.


End file.
